Lina Khan factors to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

A shocking determine is celebrating Figma’s profitable IPO: Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Commerce Fee.

In a Friday afternoon post on X, Khan linked to an article about Figma’s impressive first day of trading and argued the IPO is “an awesome reminder that letting startups develop into independently profitable companies, quite than be purchased up by present giants, can generate huge worth.”

Khan was alluding to a $20 billion deal for Adobe to amass Figma that fell through again in 2023. Whereas Adobe cited the shortage of a “clear path” to approval from the European Fee and the U.Okay. Competitors and Markets Authority, the acquisition additionally confronted regulatory scrutiny in the USA over issues that it may forestall Figma from being an “efficient competitor” to Adobe.

Khan was FTC chair on the time, main the company to problem Massive Tech on fronts together with startup acquisitions — to the purpose that corporations tried to keep away from this scrutiny with “reverse acqui-hires” through which they employed key staff members and licensed know-how quite than buying startups outright. (The apply seems to be continuing regardless of Khan’s departure from the FTC.)

Whereas her aggressive stance led to intense criticism from corners of the tech trade, she defended her approach by saying that solely a tiny proportion of offers obtained “a re-evaluation” and arguing that founders would in the end profit from “a world through which you may have six or seven or eight potential suitors” quite than “only one or two.”

And though Khan — who’d been appointed by President Joe Biden — resigned at the start of the second Trump administration, her feedback Friday paint the Figma IPO as a vindication for her method, calling the IPO “a win for workers, buyers, innovation, and the general public.”

After all, Khan’s critics usually tend to see Figma’s success as coming regardless of regulatory scrutiny, not due to it. For instance, Wedbush Safety analyst Dan Ives told Business Insider, “Figma is a large success, nevertheless it’s due to the corporate’s revolutionary development and never as a result of FTC and Kahn.”